


The First Step

by DrownSoda



Category: Brideshead Revisited - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, in the early days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrownSoda/pseuds/DrownSoda
Summary: Charles kisses Sebastian for the first time on a summer’s day at Brideshead.





	The First Step

**Author's Note:**

> This is only short because I’m trying to get back into the groove of writing Brideshead fic after a long break! I have a much longer story on the go that I’ll be working on shortly.  
> My tumblr is now named modrngirl and my Twitter which I don’t use very much is drovvnsoda if anyone cares haha :)

That first summer of knowing Sebastian seemed to be hotter than any of the summers of my boyhood, and the days we spent sunbathing in various somewhat secluded spots in Brideshead seemed to be the hottest of all. It was a heavy, but not sticky heat, punctuated by a light breeze that would cause any nearby leaves to move a few inches forward, and women’s fashionable long scarves would billow charmingly when it got a tad stronger. It was the summer that introduced me to a certain beauty that I wasn’t aware could exist in Britain and still doubt today.

Sebastian was so finely beautiful and clearly noble, a product of a millennia of riches poured into art, architecture, the best of everything to produce the best of everyone - I imagined that some distant ancestors in times more brutal than ours had fought bloodily solely so that he could have the perfect conditions to bloom as he did, the delicate beauty that only those born into luxury possess. I could have worked my way to immeasurable wealth, more wealth than the Marchmain’s had at hand, but I would never have the fragile charm of Sebastian, or the remarkable averageness of Bridey or Cordelia, the two extremes of wealth. And he never looked so fragile or so charming as he did then, golden skin glinting under the thin rays of sunshine, his head occasionally turning to glance at me when he thought I was looking away, giving a furtive smile when I caught his eye. 

I decided to make a first move of sorts. “You’re very tanned, Sebastian.”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes. I go for the - the Italian look. I think it suits me,” He held his eyes on mine, lids hooded, and let out a languorous laugh, “You’re so very English, Charles, and your skin shows it. Lily white. And a bit of pink!” He prodded his finger on my sunburnt shoulder and a sharp pain coursed through my skin.

“Ow!” I laughed, batting his finger away, “It isn’t fair that you get so golden and I just burn and peel and look a sorry sight.”

“I think you just aren’t used to sunbathing,” he declared, turning abruptly onto his back. 

He lay there, completely naked, not bothering to cover his groin with his blanket or discarded shirt. I stared for just a moment before I turned away, my cheeks red from embarrassment so much as from the sun. 

He, of course, noticed everything. I could see through the corner of my eye his sly smile widening slowly as he stretched, arching his back like a cat so that each lithe muscle of his torso and thighs shifted. A similarly feline mew of a yawn was released. 

“You’re even more English than I expected, Charles,” he said, with a mock sigh of disappointment.

“What do you mean?” I only just now dared to meet his eyes.

“So coy. I know you want to look. You know I know you want to look. Why the pantomime? There’s no shame in it.”

I believed that then, and there, there was no shame in it for him. The shame would come later and seem so sudden, though it really was a gradual erosion of the shaky foundation on which his whole personality was built by those imposing external forces that permeated the very air of Brideshead. But on that glorious summer’s day, with fresh fruit and wine and honey surrounding us it felt as if there had never been any shame in any of it, anywhere, as if shame did not exist.

So, unashamed, I looked over, and did not look away even when I felt I was gawping. His torso was covered in a thin layer of light blonde hair that glistened with sweat, but this hair darkened near his navel in a trail down to his prick, which was somewhat hard. I’d never seen another man hard before; my only previous experience of seeing men nude had been in the comically unerotic realm of school changing rooms, where all eyes were somehow both on you and avoiding you simultaneously. 

He reached out his hand and placed it on my cheek, running his fingers over the light stubble that, in my summertime haze, I hadn’t bothered to shave. “Come here, Charles.”

And so I edged closer towards him, not turning over myself, until our faces were inches, no, centimetres away from one another, my chin propped up on my wrist. That’s when, for the first time, we kissed. Our angles were awkward and restrained at first; he was propped up tenuously by his elbows and I was almost hovering over him as our lips grazed each other, before he pulled me closer, into his arms, the both of us on our sides. The kissing itself seemed almost secondary to the warmth of soft, exposed skin on skin, the feeling of hands in hair, that initial rush of emotion - the dropping stomach, the rising chest….

The rest of that day is hazy in my memory now. Like the whole of that summer there is a certain cast over it, a muffled glow about it. We did not go much further that day, like we did later on. It was my first step into that other world. But the feeling of lightness I had on that day, and on all of those heady days of those lazy months in which I lived for the first time, is one I’ve never forgotten, but never experienced again.


End file.
